Poster boy for statistical predictors, Nate Silver, has a new piece out explaining the vision for the future of journalism which lies behind his new site FiveThirtyEight: Our methods are not meant to replace “traditional” or conventional journalism… Still, I would never have launched FiveThirtyEight in 2008, and I would not have chosen to broaden its … Read the full post »

Many British journalists are so keen to have a good story to run, they are easily bought off and distracted by government spin doctors who can get them to ditch an unwanted story as long as the spin doctor has a better story to offer up as journalistic payment. That is the basic story of … Read the full post »

Rule of political journalism #27: When writing about spin doctors smearing political opponents in the media, remember that your colleagues who ran the stories bear no responsibility. And so: .@DPMcBride revelations in a nuthshell: his book says he regularly manipulated journos; journos say nothing of interest in book #FancyThat — Mark Pack (@markpack) September 20, … Read the full post »

With Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow, it is understandable that journalists are breaking out the hung Parliament speculation file. Yet almost all the speculation is deeply flawed, repeating long-standing errors and failing even to learn from 2010. Speculating about whether the Lib Dems might prefer Labour or the Tories in a hung Parliament may be … Read the full post »